Ultimate Gift Guide for Writers

Tis’ the season for gift giving. It’s easy to know what writers want: a five-book deal at a top publisher. Barring that, check out these suggestions to help you find gifts for the writers in your life.

FOOD ITEMS

Caffeinated beverages

If you hang out with writers, you will soon learn that we love our caffeinated beverages.

Most writers don’t earn a full-time income from writing and may take many years to “make it.” Most of us write early in the morning or late in the evening and subsist on caffeine. Liquid motivation can go a long way to making the writerly lifestyle work around full-time employment and other life demands.

Or maybe there’s just something about a steaming cup of coffee that’s downright magical.

In any case, find out the preferred caffeinated beverage of your writer and go to town. Options include:

a sampling of teas

a really large bag of coffee

membership is a tea or coffee of the month club

Gift card to a coffee shop or tea house

Go ahead and spring for the good stuff. A really good cup of home-brewed coffee is a nice luxury at cents to the cup.

Comfort foods/drinks

Aside from caffeinated beverages, comfort foods and drinks are also a good bet.

The path to success is paved with rejection and angst. The angst of showing your work to the world. The rejection when it’s not immediately accepted as the most amazing things since Harry Potter. The angst of wondering if you will EVER get published. The angst of worry when you finally are published. It doesn’t end.

Which is why, in addition to caffeinated beverages, writers are fond of our comfort foods. Ferret out the comfort food of choice for your writer and then get creative. Common choices include:

Chocolate

Wine

Chocolate of the month or Wine of the month club

Like coffee and tea, a little splurge can go a long way. So skip the checkout chocolate bar and go for the Godiva.

STATIONARY

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a writer

must be in want of stationary

– Not Jane Austen

Ok, not as eloquent as Jane’s opening line about marriage, but it does seem true that writers love the physical tools of the trade. Even those of us that do our writing on a computer, still love the old-fashioned stuff.

A Fancy Pen (or two)

A good pen is a wonderful thing. I like to use pens as a tangible celebration of accomplishments. Like a bottle of wine, I find the price bump from “mediocre” to “good” is not too bad. But you can easily spend upwards of “that could have been a mortgage payment.”

Here are two pens that I currently own and love but won’t break the bank:

Notebook or Journal

A nice notebook pairs well with those new pens you’re buying. If your favorite writer has not yet discovered the joys of Bullet Journaling, they will. Trust me. I give it a year or until they open an Instagram account, whichever comes first.

Whatever they’ll use it for, you really can’t go wrong with a nice notebook: